19 january 2020
- Fixed the blog theme and gave it a navigation link.
18 january 2020
- Major redesign of the site, got rid of the footer and "under construction".
Made a bunch of under-the-hood improvements to text handling in TTMS-76, in particular Typewriter now has a logical model of "bangcode" for escapes, which I'll do even more with later. I've nearly decided that Typewriter is the editor for TTMS-76 BASIC, something like the NLS editor is in The Mother of all Demos.
The status bar shows the bangcode entered:
T!LHIS!002C !LIS!002C !USPARTA!!produces:
This, is, SPARTA!Obviously I still need line editing capabilities.
13 january 2020
- Calculator: Interesting problem is how you interact when the keyboard is very limited. You can't add infinite new buttons, so finding reasonable shortcuts is more art than science.
- Typewriter: Added !XXXX escapes so now you can type comma !2C at !40 and !26 tilde !7E and more! Normal exclamations work fine. I suppose you could type lowercase that way, but wow, no.
- Put an ASCII chart in the Operator's Manual, because all such books had an ASCII chart back in the day!
- Considered making all text in TTMS display like the TRS-80 CoCo: "Lowercase" would be uppercase chars in reverse video. Part of the appeal of the Model I/III/IV over the brightly-colored CoCo was the lettering; Level 1 systems only had uppercase, but Level 2 added lowercase with extenders. For pure readable text, that made it the best 8/16-bit computer. Is the TTMS-76 more of a CoCo or a Model III?
- Did a little thinking about how TinyBASIC will work. I'm thinking a translator from BASIC to JS in a wrapped function, with a Duff's Device to fake GOTO is easiest.
Goofing off with TTMS-76 time is over for the weekend, alas.
Captain's log, supplemental: Goofed off a bit more, sorted carts into categories and decentralized selection, so it's easier for me to add a large number of new carts now.
12 january 2020
- I've only been able to work on the TTMS-76 on weekends, but Heist is nearly functional; you can now advance thru a deck, but there's no chance of failure, so it's trivial. That'll get fixed next update, either tomorrow or next week. Probably needs some ANSI art for victory or loss.
- I try to check in on
botanyevery day:
botany
options
1 - water ())))).....) 49% _.
2 - look //\\ //\
3 - garden | |\\ // \\
4 - visit \V//| |
5 - instructions ||
6 - exit ||/
. , _ . ., || _ ., _ .
^ ' ` '
plant: young brugmansia
score: 746273
You notice your plant looks different.
You whistle a tune to your brugmansia.
Generation: 1
Growth rate: 1.0x
09 january 2020
- Fun in weechat: When you do
/bar toggle nicklist, how do you scroll? Apparently there's no tab focus. It's F11/F12.
07 january 2020
tilde.town's chat local IRC is nice enough, but the weechat client is a little cramped and awkward if you're used to a big GUI.
After some Whately-like study of the WeeChat User's Guide and blogs, I have these commands:
/bar hide buflist
/bar hide nicklist
/bar hide title
/set weechat.look.buffer_time_format %H:%M
/set weechat.look.prefix_align_max 12
/bar set input items [input_prompt]+(away),[input_search],[input_paste],input_text
/bar set status items [buffer_last_number],[buffer_plugin],buffer_number+:+buffer_name+(buffer_modes)+{buffer_nicklist_count}+buffer_zoom+buffer_filter,scroll,[lag],[hotlist],completion
/save
/layout store
I haven't found an equivalent of Limechat's "set marker" and "jump to marker" for catching up when away, so I just hit sh-pgup and then new text accumulates below it, and when I come back I can sh-pgdn to catch up.
I would like to move the buffer list into a horizontal display at the top of the screen, rather than vertical on the side, but I haven't figured that out yet, so I just hide it, and scroll over with opt-right when I need to see server command results.
If I ever need to see nicklist, I can just /bar show nicklist, but I rarely look at that even in Limechat where it's easy.
03 january 2020
- TTMS-76: Fixed layout issues for the screen and help areas.
- Heist: Started this larger game, sort of based on Chainsaw Warrior and the Rick & Morty heist episode, "One Crew Over the Crewcoo's Morty".
02 january 2020
- Amazing: Added an @ explorer and hidden map by default. No scoring, it's still just a maze.
- site: Added the TTMS-76 (Tilde Town Microcomputer System '76) Operator's Manual, explaining everything about your new personal computer.
- Standardized colors in all programs. The TTMS-76 only supports the standard 16 CGA/HTML 3.2/CSS 1.0 colors. (only the console 'screen' is restricted in colors)
01 january 2020
- Amazing: Basic maze generator, but required me to write more libraries.
- Changed font to Mozilla Fira, Sans and Mono.
31 december 2019
- Select Program Cartridge interface, improved virtual keyboard.
- Now it's super easy for me to add more program cartridges.
- Finally got the footer to stay at the bottom and scroll down nicely, which may be the hardest problem in computer science.
Development note: Rather than reupload every iteration, I moved my local files into a folder named "~mdhughes" (always in quotes), then in the parent folder ran:
python3 -m http.server --cgi -b localhost 8000And now I have a nice local copy which I can refresh whenever, but keep my absolute paths. Which I don't really need yet as I have no subfolders, but I could.
30 december 2019
- Cityscape: Fixed balance, display the blast radius for bombs. Done?
- Typewriter: Just a test of the virtual keyboard for mobile users. Might overflow the footer, needs some CSS yadda yadda.
- Now that I have two program cartridges and plan to add a bunch more, the START buttons are obviously wrong. Probably add a radio checkbox under each, and single START button?
29 december 2019
- Moved in, set up zsh, vimrc, screenrc, etc like I like it.
- Basic style sheet and page template. Yeah, that looks like me.
- Animated an "under construction" sign; unlike blink it has CSS animation in a nice curve, read the style.css to see how.
Later:
- Wrote Cityscape and put it up. I can't justify this, it just is what it is. It's sort of based on the Eclipse trilogy by John Shirley.